From 1936 to 1938, over 2,300 former slaves from
across the American South were interviewed by writers and journalists under the
aegis of the Works Progress Administration. These former slaves, most born in
the last years of the slave regime or during the Civil War, provided first-hand
accounts of their experiences on plantations, in cities, and on small farms.
Their narratives remain a peerless resource for understanding the lives of
America's four million slaves. What makes the WPA narratives so rich is that
they capture the very voices of American slavery, revealing the texture of life
as it was experienced and remembered. Each narrative taken alone offers a
fragmentary, microcosmic representation of slave life. Read together, they offer
a sweeping composite view of slavery in North America, allowing us to explore
some of the most compelling themes of nineteenth-century slavery, including
labor, resistance and flight, family life, relations with masters, and religious
belief.

This web site provides an opportunity to read a sample
of these narratives, and to see some of the photographs taken at the time of the
interviews. The entire collection of narratives can be found in George P. Rawick,
ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1972-79).

African Ancestry is an established genetic genealogy company, headquartered
in Washington, DC. Started in 2002, co-founders, Gina Paige and Dr. Rick
Kittles, have created a vehicle to enable people of African descent to trace
their ancestry back to their present-day African country of origin by analyzing
their DNA.

The National Archives offers insight into the lives of people,
their families and our history. Because the records at the National Archives
come from every branch of the Federal government, almost all Americans can find
themselves, their ancestors, or their community in the archives. Knowing how a
person interacted with the government is key to a successful search.